When my brother, our friends and I played as kids in the early '80s, our only visual aids were basic paper materials. We'd map the dungeons out in pencil on graph paper, or use a large hex map for outdoors adventures. Later on we started using minis, but we never went in for dungeon tiles or anything like that. Our minis were just a novelty, never a major component of our game play.

But the history of D&D is very much rooted in the wargaming tradition. If you talk to any of the old-timers who played D&D in the 1970s, it actually started out with an emphasis on miniatures.

I've read that the "Theatre of the Mind" style of play was pioneered by some college students from Southern California. According to some accounts, some SoCal D&D groups would even show up dressed in costume.

Playing in costume is an old tradition, still carried forward to today.

The idea of gaming as a public performance is a new one, though. And I kind of like it and would like to break into that field someday.